


summer science

by mangemouth



Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 21:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangemouth/pseuds/mangemouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A very belated fic for <a href="http://ferrrox.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://ferrrox.livejournal.com/"></a><b>ferrrox</b>, who gave me the prompt "Biology." Another modern AU GinZura, this time young and innocent (and a bit stupid, too).</p>
    </blockquote>





	summer science

**Author's Note:**

> A very belated fic for [](http://ferrrox.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://ferrrox.livejournal.com/)**ferrrox** , who gave me the prompt "Biology." Another modern AU GinZura, this time young and innocent (and a bit stupid, too).

It’s too wet, and uncomfortably hot, and everything smells faintly of tubers. Katsura Kotarou is not, in fact, exploring a misty lost-world jungle, but is instead having his mouth explored by one Sakata Gintoki’s tongue.

Really, the whole thing is appalling – Gintoki is breathing hard into his mouth, and his breath smells like what he ate for breakfast (porridge with too much sugar). He keeps being blinded by his own hair, because the other boy had tried to pull out his hair tie, but had gotten it caught in summer-tangled strands, and succeeding only in mussing it further. Likewise, his bangs keep getting mashed over his eyes with the movements of Gintoki’s head, because this particular summer afternoon is unbearably hot and it makes his hair lank, heavy, and uncooperative.

Also due to the heat, but mostly due to Ginko-san’s insistence that they lug heavy vegetable crates all the way from the garden in the backyard to the truck parked out on the street, they are both sporting unattractive stains in the armpits of their t-shirts and around their collars. This is gross and not conducive to wanting to kiss in the first place, but just to make it _worse,_ Gintoki’s pushed him down into the grass, and dirt is _sticking_ to those rings of sweat, while small twigs and rocks bore into his back.

The permhead doesn’t seem to care about any of this, lazy eyes glazed as he licks between Katsura’s lips heavily, and every time he leans half an inch back Katsura can feel the spit strung between them. Half of his body is being crushed awkwardly beneath Gintoki’s, and he’s pretty sure his arm has fallen asleep, because it’s sending numb, unpleasant prickles down to his fingertips, which are utterly trapped between the other boy’s chest and his own shoulder.

What is more appalling than even all of this together is the fact that he’s starting to enjoy it.

After all, he’s earned this. It’s truly astounding to think about, but Katsura has _willingly_ run the gross-and-rude gauntlet to find himself at this very spot, getting ants in his shorts.

He supposes one _could_ compare the learning experience to swimming, or kendo, but really it’s in a class all its own. When one is building their stamina for kendo, there are set exercises to accomplish, footing to be memorized and replicated. (It’s a useless comparison, since Katsura rarely manages to find his footing.)

Swimming is maybe a little more similar (mostly in the fact that Katsura consistently feels like he is running out of air), but it’s still much more straightforward – one learns to float, and then to doggy paddle, and then to backstroke. All the steps link together quite naturally, and there is a sense of accomplishment to be found when one finally steps on the diving board for the first time (with the whole pool at one’s cannonballing mercy).

The kind of stamina he’s had to build for – for whatever he and Gintoki are doing now, for whatever he and Gintoki _are_ now – centers mostly on a tolerance for things that he doesn’t understand, finds awkward or indecent, or irritate him. The steps don’t seem to come in any proper order, either, and Katsura wonders if he’ll ever find a method to the madness (if he’ll ever even _see_ the diving board).

As it stands, there isn’t a lot in common between Gintoki accidentally sneezing in his hair, and the warmth Katsura finds between their pressed together palms. There isn’t a lot in common between those pathetic Hinamori doujinshi Sakamoto bought Gintoki for his last birthday, and the unfamiliar heat Katsura finds in his stomach at the most unexpected of times. There isn’t a lot in common between how Gintoki clings to his side like a _ridiculous scaredy-pants little girl_ on Halloween night, jumping at every noise in the dark, and the way Gintoki comes up with the most insulting, most creative insults against park joggers Katsura has ever heard in his whole life. There isn’t a lot in common between the time Gintoki cried against his neck, _really_ cried (the kind of crying they don’t show in movies, all spit-bubbles and runny noses and awful hiccups), and the time they fought, _really_ fought (the kind of fighting they don’t show in movies, all cracking voices and gushing bloody noses and tripping on their own sneakers).

It’s only in retrospective that Katsura ever finds any collective link – it’s all bodies, he supposes. It’s all a kind of biology.

The description doesn’t explain things as neatly as Katsura might like, and it doesn’t leave him feeling prepared for running any future gross-and-rude triathlons. He’d sat in the back of the public library once, reading an extremely embarrassing book for at least two hours, just to see where all this heavy mouth-breathing and inconvenient body-smushing was headed. He’d needed another book just to understand the mechanics, and an enormous atlas of ancient Greek cities to prop in front of his face, because he just couldn’t stop blushing for another hour following.

Of one thing he is certain. If anyone had asked him, a few months prior (to the way their eyes suspiciously started meeting upon realizations that they were _alone_ , to the stupid flips his stomach does when Gintoki bossily grabs hold of his hand), if anyone was curious as to why he’d ever of his own volition want anything to do with Gintoki’s spit, and Gintoki’s sweat, and Gintoki’s big mouth and ruder imagination, he knows he wouldn’t be able to answer with the excuse of biology.

He wouldn’t be able to answer because there _isn’t_ any science, not at the very root of it. Nothing could be evaluated or counted to explain that even with ants crawling up his shorts, even with the line of drool down the side of Gintoki’s mouth, Katsura doesn’t want to be anywhere else.

Katsura isn’t certain of very much, but he knows for sure that it only _starts_ with gross-and-rude bodies – it ends with hearts.

And with or without biology, this is the best day of summer (until tomorrow).

“Oi, Zura.”  



End file.
